FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT SEWAGE - PAGE 3

The Palatine Village Council has postponed a vote on whether to allow a sewage holding tank for the proposed new home for the Hilltop Animal Hospital. The hospital wants to move to the 600 block of West Lake-Cook Road. Owner Ray Hinkle has asked for permission to install the tank as a temporary solution until he can get a city sewer hookup. "The holding tank would buy us some time. With a few years of business under our belt we would be in better financial situation to pay" for the sewer connection, he said.

Saddled with two sewage treatment plants, one underworked and one overburdened, the Addison Village Board has approved a $23,700 engineering study on how to redistribute the suburb's sewage flow. The village's South Treatment Plant, on Villa Avenue between Lake Street and Fullerton Avenue, has been running 16 percent above capacity in recent months, said Gregory Brunst, the village's superintendent of water pollution control. In addition, he said, most major new construction planned for the town will be in areas that could feed as much as 1 million more gallons of waste to the south plant.

Since its creation in 1989, the DuPage River Project steadily has increased its influence on the confluences that are DuPage County streams. Now, the group may be embarking on its most auspicious effort. As part of a lengthy review of sewage treatment plants in the county, the organization sent a letter to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency that cites concerns with the South Bloomingdale Wastewater Treatment Plant, which processes sewage for the estimated 20,000 residents of Bloomingdale and releases the treated water into the east branch of the DuPage River.

Caryn McCoy encountered the perils of a winding country road near her Long Grove home six weeks ago. She was struck by a sport-utility vehicle while riding her bike, suffered three broken ribs and a broken clavicle and received 30 stitches. She and more than a dozen of her neighbors in the Country Club Meadows subdivision say a new sewage lift station and the trucks servicing it will increase hazards on an already dangerous route noted for its S-curve and blind turns where motorists and bicyclists compete for space.

About 20,000 gallons of treated sewage spilled from a wastewater treatment plant in Algonquin when a tank cover failed, authorities said Monday. A similar spill in December from another tank there caused up to 10,000 gallons of treated sewage to pour out. The spill, which occurred when a tank cover failed Saturday, was contained at the site at Illinois Highway 31 and Wilbrandt Street and didn't cause any environmental or safety hazards, Assistant Village Manager Jenna Kollings said.

The state will sue the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District over a 2004 incident that allowed 2 billion gallons of raw sewage overflows into Lake Michigan and other waterways, the Wisconsin attorney general said Tuesday. Atty. Gen. Peg Lautenschlager said the suit, to be filed Thursday, will accuse the district of dumping 473 million gallons of sewage in Milwaukee County waterways. It also will allege the raw-sewage dumping and 1.7 billion gallons of sewer overflows constitute a public nuisance.

Forty-four female prisoners were moved to higher ground after a water main broke at the Cook County Jail in Chicago, sending raw sewage spewing into cells. The flood late Friday night was confined to the first floor of the women's division, and the pipes were being repaired, said Cook County sheriff's police spokesman Bill Cunningham. Bottled water was brought in, Cunningham said, and three prisoners were held in cells designed for two.

The Village Board has agreed to an "odor-control" plan for Frankfort's West sewage plant. The board approved a $160,000 contract with Delta Fiberglass to cap troughs, decanters and clarifiers in the plant. Board members indicated such a plan would take care of "90 percent of the problem." "Residents of Connecticut Hills and Tanglewood (subdivisions) have often complained of odors" from the plant, said Frankfort Mayor Raymond Rossi.

The Bolingbrook Village Board has taken the first step to help as many as 70 residents in the Colonial subdivision who have been plagued with sewage back-up problems for the last 10 years. The board on Tuesday night decided that any federal Community Development Block Grant money the village receives this year will be used for a project to install equipment to alleviate reverse gravity sewage flow into homes in an older section of the community. Mayor Roger Claar and Clerk Bonnie Austgen have been authorized to file a 100-page application for the grant with Will County.

The Lockport City Council on Wednesday will consider several motions to put a sewage-treatment plant expansion project back on track. In 1996, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency denied a permit to Lockport for the project because of problems with the engineering plans. Lockport appealed the decision, putting the project on hold. The City Council, based on advice from its engineer and consulting environmental attorney, recently agreed to consider motions at its meeting Wednesday to end the legal action and allow the expansion to begin.